Entries from July 29th, 2010

By Tracy Dingmann The Journal published a letter today from a reader who made an excellent point about a recent story involving a former Albuquerque Public Schools official. The official, former chief financial officer Dupuy Bateman, had been placed on paid administrative leave May 24 after APS Superintendent Winston Brooks announced he had “lost faith” […]

By Denise Tessier With Arizona’s immigration law scheduled to take effect this week, and the first of 1,200 National Guard troops scheduled to arrive on the Mexican border three days after that, the Albuquerque Journal appears to be trying to give the issue the coverage it deserves. I share the resigned dismay my colleague Tracy […]

By Tracy Dingmann I couldn’t help but notice some shockingly selective editing in two nationally-generated stories the Journal ran recently on immigration. The first example came on Monday, in the Associated Press story the Journal headlined “Symbol of Immigration Anger.” The version I’m referring to here is the heavily-edited one that ran in the Journal’s […]

By Tracy Dingmann So many times we at ABQ Journal Watch have written about the particularly good work done by various individual reporters at the Journal. It’s time to do it again today. Given the topic, the July 23 UpFront column “Thieves Hit Kid’s Graves,” by Joline Gutierrez Krueger could have been rendered in overwrought […]

By Tracy Dingmann I try to be fairly circumspect when I’m writing posts about the noteworthy things I see in the Albuquerque Journal. I try to tie my criticism – or praise – to some kind of constructive journalistic principle I’ve picked up over my 20 years of writing for newspapers. That’s really the whole […]

By Denise Tessier In its sole editorial for the day, the Albuquerque Sunday Journal made some good points about the need for immigration reform at the federal level. But the piece, entitled “Thank Arizona for Immigration Debate,” strained credibility (and no doubt, lost some readers) with the snide attitude of its opening sentence, which said: […]

By Tracy Dingmann In the world of journalism, one of the worst things a newspaper can do is to “bury the lead.” The expression refers to the unfortunate – and usually inadvertent – practice of burying the most important information far down in the story. Besides going against common sense, burying the lead defies newspapers’ […]

By Tracy Dingmann There was some interesting pushback in the paper today. It came from Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent Winston Brooks, who is lucky enough to have a regular column in the paper. I say lucky because in his July 13 column, Brooks got the opportunity to directly address some pretty pointed criticism that came […]

By Tracy Dingmann Former city councilor and county commissioner Steve Gallegos made the Journal this week for a bizarre protest on Civic Plaza in which he burned copies of the paper. Gallegos said he was angry about the Journal’s news stories and editorials over the past month that he felt did not properly represent the […]

By Tracy Dingmann The man known as the “Cookie Bandit” was undoubtedly a bad guy. Joseph Henry Burgess earned his nickname because he survived for years by stealing food and supplies from cabins in the Jemez Mountains where he lived. When he died in a police shootout a year ago, Burgess was the chief suspect […]